


A Pretty Problem (A Study in Cerulean, Chapter 1)

by angwe



Series: A Study in Cerulean [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angwe/pseuds/angwe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which we meet Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, and are introduced to the problem at hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pretty Problem (A Study in Cerulean, Chapter 1)

**Author's Note:**

> An apologia: I’ve borrowed liberally from characterizations in canon and BBC. I’ve stolen language from William Gibson and tried to write like Neal Stephenson. My vision of cyberspace isn’t exactly flushed out descriptively in this, but it isn’t as abstract as Neuromancer nor as “embodied” as the metaverse in Snow Crash.
> 
> Also, I am referring to STUDY because it is the introduction of the characters to the audience, but I have decided to forgo the “meeting story” and dropped the reader in the middle of John and Sherlock’s life. This is a trope from cyberpunk. You get used to it.
> 
> Finally, before the cut, this is brutally alpha. I’ve just typed what I wrote long-hand into a text editor. Most of the grammar should be OK because I correct myself as I go. It’s second nature. But, I can’t vouch for it. If you read this, bleed on it. Pretend you have a red pen and mark the crap out of it.
> 
> OK, really finally on this one, I can count on Katya to do this, but please, if the slang annoys you or is confusing, point it out to me. I read and re-read cyberpunk novels all the time. I’m a bit immersed in it. I have developed the reading habits that allow me to skate along in a cyberpunk novel long enough to actually pick up the meaning of the slang. I don’t know if I’m good enough at writing it to do that for my readers.

“Sonofabitch!”

I was trying to mutter this, very unsuccessfully, so that my roommate wouldn’t hear me.

“John, stop trying to convince The Architecht to let you repair the house without a rebuild and come take a look at this. I’d like your opinion, if you please.”

I tried not to stare too open-mouthed at my half-dressed companion while he held his hands in mid-air - one half-gripping nothing, the other seeming to swat at non-existent flies somewhere between his face and the nothing in his other hand. It was neither his state of relative deshabile, nor the frankly comical motions he was making (taken out of context of the portable deck plugged into his arms, neck, and cyber-eyes) but more the fact that he’d been absorbed for the last seventeen hours in some bit of digital forensics - the relevance of which I was not privy to - and I had assumed he was not aware of my “mucking about,” as he might call it, with the virtual hidey-hole we’d constructed years ago in a run-down data-haven designed to look like a mansion. (Sherlock’s rules for data-cloaking indicated that the more opulent on the outside, the less worth anyone assumed was on the inside. He was right, of course.) It had become somewhat worse for the wear after the incident with the, shall we say, “rogue” AI (memoirs of which I shan’t be at liberty to put text to screen about for still a few more years).

“Don’t look so astonished. You have twenty-six different tonal inflections for the phrase, ‘Sonofabitch!” and I’ve been able to classify them for the purposes of noting your mood. That was a classic number twenty-three, ‘thwarted frustration, with the intent to dig your heels in,’ and you mentioned re-doing the Maldives Semi-Royal Data Haven yesterday.”

“Right. So, what did you want me to look at?” I had long since given up trying to plumb the depths of Sherlock’s odd understanding of human behavioral characteristics despite having few of his own and his eternal lack of interest in most interpersonal interaction. Plugging my rig back in, I turned to where he stood, now overlaid with all the default datasets I began to expect cluttering my new view. Sherlock had been using my deck again. Only man in the world insane enough to consciously divide his brain between two data-sensoriums. I dialed-down the information overload (haven’t been the same since the Afghan incident) and could finally see a visual of a torn sheet of A4 in the hands of my associate.

“It’s a file fragment. Business document. You’ve crammed on some dummy header to make it render. I presume this isn’t the original.”

“Heavens, no, John. But your analysis is extremely superficial. I was hoping for something a little more detailed. You know my M.O.”

No matter how many times I tried to remind him that I was a ghost-man, trained for military data-psy-ops and counter-ICE measures, he always seemed to think I had an extensive forensics toolkit at hand.

“It’s not a brain-pattern, Sherlock, so I can’t diagnose it. And I don’t have those tools on hand the way you do.”

“You don’t NEED tools, not the kind you mean anyway. I want the input from that source of infinite curiosity and creativity, your wetware, the fabulous human mind.”

“Not everyone’s is quite like yours, you know.”

“No. I know that. It’s made painfully obvious to me every day. But I was rather hoping that my faith in your abilities has not been entirely misplaced.”

I sighed. “Judging by the amount of text rendered and the words on the page, it appears to be a basic business contract for delivery of…hrm…that’s an odd phrase…’remainders.’ Also, your header is rendering it, but the hit on my visuals-processing indicates there might be more to it that text. Encryption?”

“Once again, you’ve only scratched the surface, but you’ve managed to hit upon the two most salient points of this rather odd little contract fragment.”

Ignoring his jibes at my attempt, I fed the Great Showman his line, “Which are?”

“‘Remainders’ would indeed be odd phrasing were this not a print contract, which, on the surface, it is. And yet it stands out, like it shouldn’t be there. Why? And you are quite correct about the encryption, but it’s a sort I haven’t encountered before.”

“That’s rather odd, isn’t it?”

“Thank you for stating the obvious, John. I’ve been at work trying to crack it all night and it doesn’t seem to be submitting to even my most extreme methods.

This was now beyond odd, indeed. Though it was true that Sherlock could crack military codes in his sleep, I had also seen him work up the algorithms to break the toughest codes money could buy, paid for by the wealthiest non-embodied corporate states, in a matter of hours.

“What, exactly, were you hoping I’d see that you hadn’t?”

“I have a suspicion only, but I was hoping you might tentatively confirm or deny it?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? What, exactly, could I check?”

“Ahhh. No theories before we have facts, my dear Doctor Watson. I merely wish you to examine it with your ‘medical’ intuition - and perhaps your tools?”

I found it continually odd that for all the time Sherlock spent borrowing my righ, he’d never more than casually acquainted himself with my ‘ghost tools’ (as we’d called them in the forces). Chalking it up to the eccentric genius’s penchant for being “choosy” about what he keeps in his head, I pulled up some basic imprint and ID scanners and looked at the document.

“Hand it here.”

“Are you done loading up? Because this will hit your system like a ton of bricks.”

“Sherlock, it’s only a fragment, how big could it really be? Also, do you expect me to be able to do any full-descent scanning across the network? Even our internal one isn’t fast enough.” It wasn’t strictly ture, as a side effect of his knack with encryption algorithms was Sherlock’s facility with fast compression schemes, but I had a real-space doctor’s tendency to want to make contact with my “patient,” even if it was just a fragment of a documentation in this case.

As if here were a forensic investigator handling fragile skin-cell evidence, Sherlock gingerly held the “sheet” out to me.

“Make a copy if you want to take the dummy container off,” he reminded me. I almost didn’t hear him. The slowdown as I took the evidence managed to backfeed even some of my basic processing and temporarily browned-out my sensorium.

“HOLMES! What the hell?!?”

“I did try to warn you, you know.”

“Yes. Yes you did. You might’ve tried a little harder.”

“How were you going to learn if I hadn’t let you have that little experience? Not every ‘small fragment’ is some waylaid memory accidentally stuck in a side-by-side memory enhancer unit.”

“And not every ‘small fragment’ of human memory is this tightly encrypted. Most of us don’t have the spare mental cycles to embed compression in encryption. We’re rather straightforward.”

“Ah, so you noticed that! Alas that you lot tend to EITHER hide, OR compress your memories. No wonder you feel like you’re running out of room, or feeling exposed all the time.”

“I don’t have time for one of your sermons on humanity’s failings if you also want me to scan this monstrosity.”

“Who said anything about a sermon, John? Just making my usual observations,” he tossed over his shoulder. He probably said more but between him moving toward the door, grabbing the archaic pipe on the way out, and trying to keep my focus on the ridiculously dense data in front of me, his words were lost.

******

Some hours later, I was deep into my work when I realize there was a silent presence off to my left. Trying to act casual about it, I shifted my weight like I was making the rig more comfortable.

“You know, John, I see exactly what you’re reaching for. And I might even be worried about the effects of a quick-stun if I weren’t also perfectly sure you hadn’t charged it in about a week.”

At this point, I smoothly rolled back, stripping the rig forward off my body and pulling the derringer from my armpit holster.

“Perhaps this will put the fear into you, then.”

“It might, if I hadn’t moved,” said a voice slightly further left than I had anticipated.

Knocking the gun from my hand was a familiar riding-crop and when it started to snake my elbow and arm around my back, I went all-in for a forward roll, bringing my heel up sharply in a delayed follow. I was rewarded with glancing contact and a sudden coughing spasm from my esteemed assailant.

“I can’t believe you’re wearing those ACTIVATED while in the rig. I’m not even THAT careless,” he sputtered out before forcing a deep breath and regaining full muscle control.

“Where do you think the switch is, oh Great Detective?”

“Ah, in the derringer holster, of course. You’ve moved it.”

“You were RATHER persuasive in our last argument about it.”

“I only thought it might’ve come in handy the last time you tried to use it to —”

“Yes, yes, I’m perfectly aware of the trouble it caused. No need to rehash old failings.”

“I wouldn’t call it a failing…entirely. It did eventually get us out of that bind.”

“After you had to punch me in the kidney to activate it.”

“Regrettable malfunction, but I warned you about bio-activators.”

Collecting my pistol, deactivating the shock pads, and taking a deep breath, I moved on, “So, apart from attempting to get the better of me, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, you know me, my dear Doctor Watson, always jumping into the great data stream of life.”

“Yes, but to what particular end?”

“Need there be an end? Yes, I suppose so. I may fancy a walk from time to time, but I don’t seem to manage the vacancy of thought or expression some of my fellow inhabitants of this terrestrial sphere always seem to be wearing.”

“Right, then you’ll just want to hear what I’ve —”

“No. Not yet.”

I looked quizzically at Mr. Data-data-data-I-can’t-make-bricks-without-straw.

“I did, in fact, manage to gain more information from my sojourn in our fair section of the eternal city. I have to add it to the facts at hand, see where it fits, before I can go back to the fragment. Hold your analysis just for a moment my friend.”

“Encrypted initial report’s in the filesafe when you want it. I’m going to grab something to eat before I deep-dive. You need anything?”

A dismissive hand gesture was the last thing I caught before he decended into his pile of gear and came back up looking into the middle distance, sliding his hands and arms about like he was some win-chun sensei, demonstrating kata for advanced students.

“Right. Back in a few.”

******

It was probably six kinds of idiotic for me to have just pulled the natural leather jacket over my tank-top when I went out, but I needed a bite badly and I knew the only things edible in the cube we call a “fridge” were either Sherlock’s experiments in genetics (technically) or the small space I’d carved out for myself. It consisted, at the moment, of a small jar of bizarrely expensive jam I’d managed to find for myself the last time we’d landed a case. Let’s face it, a post-Afghan army pension might as well be printed on funny money as on pound notes for all it’s worth. It managed to pay the rent but Mrs. Hudson’s was a smaller chain and kept prices low to stay competitive. Amenities were lacking. Better just say nil.

Feeling my bare arms rub against the lining of the jacket, I thought for the thousandth time that I should have thrown on a real shirt. I was beginning to stick.

Looking around to distract myself, I tried to do what Sherlock always did on his outings: observe, classify, deduce. Dear god, were mirrorshades going through a ‘hip’ cycle again? At least this time they seemed to be going for a retro-cyborg look - small eye-caps - instead of those stupid aviators. Holmes had fancied himself a pair ages ago and I couldn’t convince him to get rid of them, despite having been broken and reassembled numerous times.

Oh well, I’d spent the five block walk contemplating eyewear and hadn’t figured out a damn thing beyond this week’s fashion trend. It might hold for a month, or for just another week. Sherlock would undoubtedly have kept track of it, fashion being a particular fetish amongst the modern criminal classes, but it was mere superficiality to me.

What would these people look like under a ghost-scan? I always wondered. Sometimes I wished I’d challenged Sherlock to improve the speed and accuracy of my scanning software instead of the protections on the flat’s network, but he wouldn’t have seen the point.

“I can tell you everything you need to know just looking at a person.”

And the smug bastard was usually right. Usually.

“That’ll be five and fifty, sir.”

Somehow, I’d managed to buy some bread, oranges, peanut butter and god knows what else (probably all of it necessary, hopefully not too much of it perishable), paid for it and left.

******

“Sherlock! I’m back! This is what’s known as the polite way to announce your arrival to a flat-mate who may be deeply embedded in a rig-run.”

“Oh shut-up, John. One, I’m reviewing the initial survey you did on the fragment - do you always have to add your own florid prose to a basic technical report? And, two, I knew you were back the moment your card-swipe was done. You have an unvarying rhythm to the sequence with which you take out your card, swipe, push, replace, and pull door closed behind you.”

“One, that ‘florid prose’ landed us our highest paying gig. Two, how did you hear any of that buried in your rig?”

“Point the first barely conceded. Point the second, I’ve added vibration sensors to the apartment walls. The datastream is available from the filesafe if you want it.”

Knowing Sherlock’s particular data addiction, I figured I’d try someday, behind five or six data-rate limiters. “Great. I’ll check it out.”

“I wanted to ask you what you’re deep-diving after. Not chasing theories, I trust?”

“Doctors, my dear consulting detective, are more like you than some of them let on. We collect as much data about our patients as possible before making a prognosis. No bricks without clay.”

“Tell that to the quacks down in Genetics Alley.”

“No, thank you, Sherlock. I’d prefer not to ‘donate’ my body, under dubious circumstances, to science.”

“Fine, then what data on your non-patient are you trying to collect?”

“Something about that compressed encryption triggered an odd flag in the memory-tree scan. Fragmentary, but potent, is the decoding.”

“John, don’t try to make up for my picking on your profession by talking over me. I’ve not had the time to familiarize myself with all your ‘ghost tools’.”

“When the scanner picks up something that strongly matches neuronal-axial firing patterns in an embedded matrix but doesn’t seem to make a coherent whole, it puts up a bright-blue flag in your periphery. Being the linguaphiles we psy-ops types are, we call that one cerulean. It’s an indicator that runs to extremes. It can easily be nothing, a false positive from a particularly complicated piece of financials software on someone’s side-by-side. Annoying, but harmless. It can just as easily be a sign of mind-seepage or memory-matrix fragmentation. Very dangerous. So you have to check every single one out. Both the highs and lows are there, so it’s not just a ‘bright-blue’ flag, it’s a cerulean flag, like the sky.”

“Thanks for the slang less, but would that make you want to deep-dive? You know the compressed encryption is intense.”

“Ah, here is the data I go seeking for you, great tinkerer of data mines.”

“Yes?”

I’d put him off a little, I could tell, by calling his data-sorting ‘tinkering’. The reality was that he sifted data like an oracle, moving it and shifting it through visualizations that would be meaningless to you or me, but which spoke volumes to him. If you made feng-shui into some kind of kung-fu, that would be Sherlock’s “data-fighting style.” But I liked having him slightly off-balance, and planned to keep him that way.

“A deep-dive will tell me what kinds of complexity we’re dealing with.”

“I am unlikely to care about the kinds of complexity, much as I care very little about orders of infinitude, my dear doctor. In a finite investigation, infinity is always too high and demands an alternative path of inquiry. Similarly, complexity is important only in one way to me, the highest order. Since I have borne out my suspicions on the highest complexity of the encryption with my methods, I don’t see much point in pursing a typology.”

“This, my friend, is where I get to show what I have managed to learn from you. If we brain-tinkers know anything, it’s that sometimes the most complex matrix to crack is only a screen, a diversion.”

“And that there’s some simpler way in?” My colleague eyed me incredulously.

“Indeed.” I was rewarded with a raised eyebrow.

“The down you must go. Plumb the depths of our little puzzle and crack me an Enigma cypher.”

“No need to get dramatic.”

But my partner’s mischievous grin was mirrored on my own face.

******

Three peanut butter and jam sandwiches, four pots of tea, and a pair of oranges to stave off scurvy later, I was twenty hours into my dive and going continuously deeper. Suddenly, I stopped. A memory from the old war days jumped to my mind. Unfortunately, it came with a healthy dose of fear-based adrenaline. I ripped the rig off.

“SHERLOCK!”

Stunned out of a reverie with his electric violin, sampler, and archaic drum machine, he came quickly to my side. “What?!? What is it?”

“It’s cerulean all the way down.”

“So?”

“The last time I saw something like this was Afghanistan.”

“Again, so?”

It wasn’t his fault. He’d never been on the front lines, so I fought the impulse to snap at him. “It was right before the AI tried to ice us.”

“It has active counter-measures?”

“No, those are less complicated than you think. It had entrapped us, partially, within itself.”

Dialing back, I projected the overall pattern onto the wall.

“It’s not a memory-matrix. You spot those about three to five levels in.”

“What, then, good doctor, is it?”

“It’s an active thought pattern, Sherlock. Or at least part of one.”

“Interesting. This case has just become most interesting.”

“Curioser and curioser?”

“Something like that.”

“So, are we hunting after Snarks then?”

“I don’t know yet, John, but when I add this data, it complicates the picture in the best of ways.”

“So, you’re saying I helped, but I didn’t crack anything for you.”

“Ah, but your little ‘study in cerulean’ have given me a few good possibilities. At last, the game is afoot!”


End file.
